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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Fixing Metro Vancouver’s road system

Opinion: Separating goods-carrying trucks from general traffic a key component

Over 50 years of freeway construction in North America shows without doubt that freeways do not reduce traffic congestion in the long run, and generally make it worse. In fact, several cities with the worst traffic congestion are also among the top 10, including Los Angeles (above) with the most freeway lane miles.

Photograph by: Kevork Djansezian
, GETPICS

By far the biggest single expenditures in Metro Vancouver have been on freeways and bridges, mainly to increase lane capacity for rush-hour traffic.

It may be hard to admit, but over 50 years of freeway construction in North America shows without doubt that freeways do not reduce traffic congestion in the long run, and generally make it worse. In fact, several cities with the worst traffic congestion are also among the top 10 with the most freeway lane miles. Still don’t believe, just Google some of the images of Los Angeles or Washington, D.C. freeways during rush hour.

The new Port Mann Bridge and Trans-Canada Highway widening have already extended the area within “reasonable commuting distance” further up the Fraser Valley and will inevitably encourage suburban development that produces more commuters. These future commuters will eventually clog up the very facilities we will still be paying off. Already, these multi-billion dollar projects are pushing traffic congestion on to existing highways.

Every drive to work starts on a neighbourhood street, travel on minor and major arterials, then often goes on the freeway to exit again onto local streets. So it only makes sense to allocate road expenditures among all these road types in a more balanced way with overall capacity in mind, rather than incurring huge chunks of debt to pay for individual Mega-projects that detract from the livability of our region and will probably just move the traffic jam from one place to another. A balanced approach to road improvements also will look at how these will meet the specific needs of general traffic, trucking and buses.

Instead of spending money on flashy Mega-projects there is more benefit to spend much less on our major and minor arterial streets that carry the bulk of our traffic throughout the day. Much less money will buy modern signalization, more turn-lanes, better intersection design, purchase of off-street parking to free up curb lanes along busy routes and other similar works to remove bottlenecks throughout the region.

Metro Vancouver’s economic well-being depends on the movement of goods on our roads throughout the region and particularly between the ports, railheads and our industries. The South Fraser Perimeter Road is an example of how we can begin to build roads specifically targeting goods movement. But building roads in the name of “goods movement” and then opening them up to general automobile traffic simply mixes trucking into a bigger traffic jam. Let’s do more to build separated truck roads, exclusive truck priority lanes and other works to separate trucks from general traffic.

How well buses move on our road system has a big overall effect on public transit costs. There are quite a few transit priority lanes spread throughout the region and TransLink’s responsibility for regional roads gives it a way to put in more bus lanes. There are lessons to be learned from other cities to improve bus operations. Some of these are discussed in my next article, which is about public transit.

Finally, a serious effort to spend a relatively small amount on modern technology can have a very large impact on Metro’s rush-hour traffic. It is likely that between 10 and 20 per cent of our highways and major arterials are under-capacity during rush hour, even though others are jammed. On many streets, motorists contribute to the jam by driving around-and-around the block to find a parking space. So the trick is to spend relatively small amounts on today’s communication and computer technology to monitor traffic in real-time and to help motorists while driving to choose the best route and find the empty parking space.

The best way to reduce demands for more highways, bridges and roads is to slow the growth in travel on them, both by encouraging people to ride public transit and by urban growth that brings living, jobs, shopping and other activities closer together.

The third article deals with public transit’s role in achieving this objective.

Doug Spaeth is the former Transportation and Regional Town Centres Program Manager for the GVRD Livable Region Plan, and subsequently owned an information technology company supplying information systems to public transit authorities in North America and overseas.

Over 50 years of freeway construction in North America shows without doubt that freeways do not reduce traffic congestion in the long run, and generally make it worse. In fact, several cities with the worst traffic congestion are also among the top 10, including Los Angeles (above) with the most freeway lane miles.

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